


The House that Derek built

by jesseofthenorth



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-24
Updated: 2013-02-24
Packaged: 2017-12-03 10:58:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/697520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesseofthenorth/pseuds/jesseofthenorth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek never set out to rebuild himself it just sort of happened.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The House that Derek built

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the beacon_hills Big Bang

Derek used to stand for hours in front of the burned out hulk of his family home just looking. Not looking for answers, or peace, or absolution. Just looking at the mess he'd made.

He thought later he did it to keep the pain and hatred and self loathing fresh. In the end that level of anger proved impossible to sustain. He was forced to let it go or self destruct. It wasn't in his nature to collapse inward and die. Besides there were people, barely more than kids for fucks sake, depending on him and he was done letting people down. At least on purpose.

****

He thought about fixing it sometimes. Putting the walls back the way they used to be. Rebuilding brick by brick and board by board. He said so to Peter. Just once, the look on Peter's face was worse than when Derek had ripped his throat out. The mad light in his eyes instantly extinguished by a flash of betrayal so deep in cut _Derek_. Peter turned away to the door of Derek's shitty apartment, slamming it behind him before Derek had a chance to do anything. Not there was anything to be done. You can't un-ring a bell and you can't fix a hurt that deep.

Derek didn't see Peter for a week. He came back with leaves in his hair and streaks of dirt on his face. He slept on Derek's couch for two days straight. Derek never mentioned rebuilding the house again.

****

They trained at the old station still sometimes but it was cold and dank and really miserable when it rained. They didn't ever train at the house, even though the hunters had stepped back and the forests of the preserve were safe again, at least for werewolves.

No one went looking there for Derek when they couldn't find him. They all thought recent events had made the place unbearable for him. 

It hadn't been exactly bearable since the fire, but the house was the only place he could go and talk to his ghosts. If he sat very quietly and didn't move Derek could still hear the sounds of family dinners and coming home form school and birthdays. He could almost make out every one of their voices.

It was they only place left on the earth where they all still lingered.

 

****

Jackson left without telling anyone. He was there one day, and gone the next. Derek felt a pull at the base of his spine and he knew what was happening, his first and only clue that something was wrong the pressure of Jackson's decreasing proximity separating them.

Derek drove by the Whittemore home that evening, when other people were sitting down to dinner. The windows of Jackson's childhood home were dark and there was a shiny new for sale sign on the lawn. There was no Porsche parked in the driveway.

A few days later he _heard_ Erica come back. He was sitting on the porch of the house letting the sun slip away around him, listening for the sounds of a life long gone. He heard instead the sound of stumbling feet and gasps of pain in the distance. He could smell her blood by the time he was at the bottom of the front step.

She was bruised and bloody and dirty and alive, and really, really sorry 'please Derek don't make me go'. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and half carried her to the Camaro. Derek had made far to many terrible mistakes to ever consider not forgiving the mistakes of others. 

Boyd came back the day after that. He was not as dirty but hurt worse. He wouldn’t go home or to the hospital or even to Deaton. All he wanted was Erica. And Derek's forgiveness. He got them both immediately. 

Derek watched them sleep in his bed, the only one he had to offer, and thought “I need a bigger place”. 

That night one of those god-awful Northern California winter storms rolled through town, tearing up trees and causing mud slides and blowing tiles off roofs.

It blew the Hale house the rest of the way down. Even the bricks from the chimney were pounded flat. Derek stood there and looked, feeling the loss all over again which was ridiculous. This house was 6 years gone. There are greater things to mourn than a burned out shell.

He started looking for a Realtor that day and told himself it was because he hated paying rent.

 

****

“You're looking at houses?” Stiles asked. He was holding the listings the Realtor had emailed Derek earlier in the week. 

Derek just lifted and an eyebrow at him, wondering how Stiles thought this was any of his business. 

Stiles looked around at the stained walls and dingy carpet of the apartment. “Right. No one in their right mind would want to stay here.” 

Derek thought about taking offense at that, but the kid was right. Derek hated the apartment and his pack only tolerated it because he was here. At the very least _they_ deserved better than this.

****

None of the houses felt right but some were a lot worse than others. Too new, too glossy, too moldy, too small. They are all had one flaw in common: too close to other houses.

“I don't want to live in town.” he told the Realtor. He knew she remembered him then, from before, when he saw something like pity in her eyes. But she didn't say anything, just showed him the few listings that were farther out.

Derek didn't say anything either, didn't tell her who he was, he didn't need her pity any more than he deserved it.

****

The grass was starting to turn a soft new green when he found the house. It was old and battered but the roof was straight, the foundation was solid and it was not beyond redemption. Even though there was not a window left in the place. All the glass broken out by storms or bored kids or some combination of the two. 

It was listed at less than half of anything else. Derek wasn't wealthy, in the strictest sense of the word but he has some money. If he was careful, this house with it's whitewashed boards and broken windows, would work. Even if he fixed everything wrong with it, it would still be cheaper than anything else he looked at. 

The papers were signed by then end of the week.

By the end of the month he had the keys in his hand. 

It took two hours for him to move in, half of that is driving time, with a stop at the hardware store to get extra keys cut. He had a duffel bag and three boxes of books.

****  
There was no front porch, no shutters and no dark wood anywhere. The baluster was gray from age and the stairs were soft from wear.

The front of the house opened onto an over grown field, the back facing the Preserve from the opposite direction of his family home. This house was on the southern side, where there was more light.

 

****

He put in windows first. Most of the old wooden frames where still there, just damaged. Derek took his time and fixed them properly. He cut panes of glass to fit the muntin style windows, liking that it was old but completely different from what he had known. The house before. 

The whole house was like that. Old and worn and completely unfamiliar. Derek liked it that way.

He could sit in the dark and hear nothing but the wind in the eves. If there were ghosts they were unfamiliar.

He painted the doors each a different bright color.

He knocked out walls and opened up space knowing (hoping) it would give them (him) room to breathe.

****  
Isaac was the first to move in, predictably. He aged out of foster care and there was no where else for him to go. His smile was full blown, nothing held back, when Derek handed him a key. Derek found himself smiling back without thinking about it. 

“Thanks” Isaac said quietly when Derek was helping him carry his stuff up to his room. Derek watched his feet on the pale wood of the curving stairs, as he carried Isaac's boxes up and didn't say anything back, afraid to sound like an idiot by blurting out how grateful he was that Isaac had said yes when Derek offered.

 

****

Isaac was terrible with a hammer but he loved to paint. He was careful and thorough and took the time to do it right.

Boyd on the other hand could drive in a three and a half inch common nail in two swings. Derek bought him a framing hammer and told him pick his own room.

 

Stiles came one day when they were hanging the last exterior door. Derek was a little bit surprised to see him without Scott. He was even more surprised to see the boy stand by his Jeep, hesitation clear in his posture, unsure of his welcome. He looked ready to bolt when Derek opened the front door and stood aside with the door held open, an invitation. 

Stiles leaped up the steps with a huge, happy grin “Nice place!” and bounced inside.

 

“Batman!” Erica yelled and threw herself at Stiles. 

Derek saw the joy and relief and unfettered happiness spread across Stiles' already grinning face. It looked a little like the sun coming out.

Derek realized it had been weeks since he had seen Stiles, or Scott. He was a little shocked to recognize he had missed the kid. 

“So!” Stiles said turning to Derek and rubbing his hands together. “Show me everything!”

****

Some things in the house he left just as he found them. 

There was an alcove at the top of the stairs, on the third floor. It had windows on three sides and you could see all the way down the driveway. Derek didn't even clean the cobwebs away from the top of the windows. The spiders were here before he was. 

Derek took care to replace the glass in the windows on the ground floor, the ones on the front of the house, with panes of old rippled glass he found in a shed out back. They are so old they look like they were melting, and the glass has gone a very light purple. “Manganese.” He told Stiles when asked why.

The upstairs bathroom, because it was beautiful and light and airy and there was nothing wrong with it, stayed the same, except for a coat of fresh paint. Nothing even needed to be tightened. Besides, he was not getting rid of a claw footed tub he could completely stretch out in. He felt no real compulsion to explain that reasoning to anyone.

Some things he changed completely. The kitchen, which was filthy and destroyed and full of mouse shit, Derek took apart completely and started again.

They replaced some flooring and just cleaned the hell out of the rest. They painted every room except for the wide open space in the attic leaving the whitewashed walls just as Derek found them.

The downstairs bathroom which was a filthy, moldy, unusable wreck making it the biggest project. He and Boyd took _that_ down to the bare wood, swinging crowbars and sledgehammers and working up a good sweat. 

When it came to putting it back together the fixtures and fittings were easy enough. It was basic plumbing. Derek wanted the walls and the floor to be tiled but mastic and mortar and thinset and grout were all kind of beyond him.

It turned out Stiles was some kind of bathroom tile savant. Derek was not really surprised. He also had no problem admitting he was glad the kid was there. Derek took Stiles to the DIY store and bought everything he asked for.

Peter hated the house. He said it smelled foul and bitched about how old it was. Derek let him bitch and offered little response in return. Peter never lifted a hand to fix anything but when the kitchen was usable, with a stove and fridge and counter tops, he made a huge pot of Pasta Bolognese and ate it with them.

“You need a dining room. Or at least a damned table.” He left before dark without saying if he would be back.

 

Scott came once asked if anyone had seen Stiles and left without coming inside.

****

The roof looked solid and well cared for but if the wind was blowing hard when it rained it leaked. 

Derek crawled around on the roof for a week trying to find the problem. He nailed on new shingles, then tried roofing tar. He pulled up and replaced a large section right over the leak. The first time it rained the leak was there, strong as ever.

He climbed up again the next day, the roof still wet, sure this time he would see the problem.

 

He was walking along the peak when something gave under his feet with a soggy tear and Derek went down. He slid across the steep pitch and over the edge, the ground roaring up to meet him before he could even think of getting a grip. 

He hit hard with a wet smack and felt something in his back let go.

“NO!” he heard and remembered that Stiles was there and no one else. Derek tried to sit up, show Stiles he was fine and there was no need to over react, but pain sliced through him so brutally it made the world go first white and then gray.

“Oh my god, Derek! Don't move, okay? Just stay down! Holy fuck! The blood, Derek! There's too much blood! What do I do? What do I do?” Stiles fumbled for his phone and Derek saw that his hands were covered in blood and so were the forearms of his shirt. His eyes were wild and terrified.

Derek reached for Stiles arm to stop him calling for help. He could feel his back knitting itself together already. It hurt like a bitch but an ambulance was only going to complicate the hell out of things.

“Just get me inside” Derek gasped, his voice mostly air but Stiles heard him anyway.

“Fuck! Are you sure?” 

Derek nodded and reached again for Stiles' shoulder to pull himself up.

He stood in the shower and let the water wash out mud and gravel and grass while the skin knits itself back together. Stiles stood outside the bathroom door and ranted the entire time. Derek had never been called a stubborn, dumb asshole so many times in his life.

When the contractor he called the next day told him “$30,000 to do the whole thing right” Derek looked over where Stiles was scowling at him, arms folded across his chest face tight and angry, still. Derek wrote a check and nailed down a date for the work to start.

****

They didn't actually change much, modernized as little as possible. Derek _liked_ that this house had a visible history that was not his.

****

His pack trained in the woods behind the house. 

He filled a room full of books. 

He bought the biggest damned TV he could find for the front room so that the all damned teenagers would stop whining at him about living in the modern age.

 

He slept on a mattress on the floor in an unfinished room for months after the last bedroom was finished, until even he had to admit that there was a moment when self sacrifice became belligerence and stupidity.

Erica whooped like she won the lottery when Derek ordered her to come help him pick out a bed. He didn't care what kind of bed he slept on but apparently Erica cared deeply.

It turned out he could sleep diagonally on a California King and not hang off any where. 

 

****

Not everything was fixed. Not in the house, not for the pack, not for him. The windows still leaked a little on windy nights. There was still a hole the size and shape of Jackson Whittemore in their ranks and Derek would feel a lot better if Scott was part of this. Derek was still an orphan with a crazy, dangerous uncle who was supposed to be a beta but is mostly a huge pain in the ass.

But.

The house was warm and comfortable 360 days of the year. They got Stiles, even if they didn't get Scott. And Derek could live with himself, what he did, and what was done to him. Most of the time. And when he couldn't the pack was there.

 

****

One day Stiles brought a chocolate cake with “Happy Anniversary!” written on it and one small candle on top.

Derek laughed when he figured it out. He had been in this house one year. He ate cake and thought it could have just as easily said “Welcome Home.”


End file.
